Payments Data

A description of the Australian payments system and a range of statistics including some overseas comparisons can be found in:

Payment, Clearing and Settlement Systems in the CPSS Countries – Volume 1 (The Red Book)
Payment Systems in EMEAP Economies (EMEAP Red Book July 2002) [PDF 1.9M]

Statistics on cheques and direct entry payments have been collected on a survey basis by the Australian Payments Clearing Association since 1994. The Reserve Bank began collecting monthly statistics from banks on both credit and debit card transactions at the same time.

In 2001, the Reserve Bank implemented a new retail payments statistics collection. The first material from this collection, providing monthly data from January 2002, was released in 2003. The collection covers cheques and bulk electronic transfers as well as debit, credit and charge cards. It draws data from most financial institutions (banks, building societies, credit unions, card companies) and some other payments system participants.

The Reserve Bank also publishes statistics on high-value payments from its real-time gross settlement system. Relevant data on the Australian payments system can be found using the links below:

C1 [XLS]: Credit and Charge Card Statistics – Additional Credit Card Statistics [XLS]
C2 [XLS]: Market Shares of Credit and Charge Card Schemes
C3 [XLS]: Merchant Fees for Credit and Charge Cards
C4 [XLS]: ATM Cash Withdrawals
C5 [XLS]: Debit Card Statistics
C6 [XLS]: Cheques and Direct Entry Payments
C7 [XLS]: Real-time Gross Settlement Statistics
C8 [XLS]: Points of Access to the Australian Payments System

Australian Payments Clearing Association
Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Statistics